Liu Xiaobo - Human Rights Activities

Human Rights Activities

On 27 April 1989, Liu returned to Beijing and immediately and actively supported the popular movement. When the army looked set to violently eject the students who persistently occupied the square to challenge the government and army enforcing martial law in Tiananmen Square, he initiated a four-man three-day hunger strike on 2 June. Later referred to as the "Tiananmen Four Gentlemen Hunger Strike", the action earned the trust of the students. He requested that the government and the students abandon the ideology of class struggle and adopt a new kind of political culture of dialogue and compromise. Although it was too late to prevent the massacre from occurring beyond the square starting from the night of 3 June, he and his colleagues successfully negotiated with the student leaders and the army commander to let all of the several thousand students withdraw peacefully from the Square, thus avoiding a possibly much larger scale of bloodshed.

On 6 June, Liu was arrested and detained in Qincheng Prison for his alleged role in the movement, and three months later was expelled from Beijing Normal University. The government's media issued numerous publications which labeled him a "mad dog" and "black hand" because he had allegedly incited and manipulated the student movement to overthrow the government and socialism. His publications were banned, including his fourth book in press, Going Naked Toward God. In Taiwan however, his first and third books, Criticism of the Choice: Dialogues with Leading Thinker LI Zehou (1989), and the two-volume Mysteries of Thought and Dreams of Mankind (1990) were republished with some additions.

In January 1991, 19 months since his arrest, Liu Xiaobo was convicted for the offense of "counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement" but exempted from criminal punishment for his "major meritorious action" for having avoided the possible bloody confrontation in Tiananmen Square. After his release, he was divorced and eventually his ex-wife and son immigrated to the US. He resumed his writing, mostly on human rights and political issues though he has not been allowed to publish in Mainland China. In 1992, in Taiwan, he published his first book after his imprisonment, The Monologues of a Doomsday’s Survivor, a controversial memoir with his confessions and political criticism on the popular movement in 1989.

In January 1993, Liu was invited to visit Australia and the US for the interviews in the documentary film Gate of Heavenly Peace. Although many of his friends suggested that he take refuge abroad, Liu returned to China in May 1993 and continued his freelance writing.

On 18 May of 1995, the police took Liu into custody for launching a petition campaign on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the 4 June massacre, calling on the government to reassess the event and to initiate political reform. He was held under residential surveillance in the suburbs of Beijing for 9 months. He was released in February 1996 but arrested again on 8 October for an October Tenth Declaration, co-authored by him and another prominent dissident Wang Xizhe, mainly on the Taiwan issue that advocated a peaceful reunification in order to oppose the Chinese Communist Party's forceful treats towards the island. He was ordered to serve three years of re-education through labor "for disturbing public order” for that statement. In the same year, he married Liu Xia.

After his release on 7 October 1999, Liu Xiaobo resumed his freelance writing. However, it is reported that the government built a sentry station next to his home and his phone calls and internet connections were tapped.

In 2000, he published in Taiwan the book A Nation That Lies to Conscience, a 400-paged political criticism. Also published, in Hong Kong, was Selection of Poems, a 450-paged collection of the poems as correspondences between him and his wife during his imprisonment; it was co-authored by Liu and his wife. The last of three books which he published during the year was in Mainland China, titled The Beauty Offers Me Drug: Literary Dialogues between Wang Shuo and Lao Xia, a 250-paged collection of literary critiques co-authored by a popular young writer and by himself under his unknown penname of "Lao Xiao". In the same year, Liu participated in founding the Independent Chinese PEN Centre and was elected to its board of directors as well as its president in November 2003, re-elected two years later. In 2007, he did not seek for the re-election of the president but held his position of the board member until detained by the police in December 2008.

In 2004, when he started to write a Human Rights Report of China at home, his computer, letters and documents were confiscated by the government. He once said, "at Liu Xia's birthday, her best friend brought two bottles of wine to but was blocked by the police from coming in. I ordered a cake and the police also rejected the man who delivered the cake to us. I quarreled with them and the police said, "it is for the sake of your security. It has happened many bomb attacks in these days." Those measures were loosened until 2007, prior to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

In January 2005, following the death of former Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang, who showed sympathy to protesters of the student demonstration in 1989, Liu was immediately put under house arrest for two weeks before realizing the death of Zhao. In the same year, he published two more books in the US, The Future of Free China Exists in Civil Society, and Single-Blade Poisonous Sword: Criticism of Chinese Nationalism.

His writing is considered subversive by the Chinese Communist Party, and his name is censored. He has called for multi-party elections, free markets, advocated the values of freedom, supported separation of powers and urged the governments to be accountable for its wrongdoings. When not in prison, he has been the subject of government monitoring and put under house arrest during sensitive times.

Liu's human rights work has received international recognition. In 2004, Reporters Without Borders awarded him the Fondation de France Prize as a defender of press freedom.